


Tomayto, Tomahto

by sarcasm_for_free



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Biblical Reinterpretation, Canon Compliant, Doubt, Gen, Godparents Aziraphale and Crowley (Good Omens), Happy Ending, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Missing Scene, Murder, Nanny Crowley (Good Omens), POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Self-Doubt, just the obvious one, more humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23835907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcasm_for_free/pseuds/sarcasm_for_free
Summary: Adam Young and Warlock Dowling were, in fact, not Aziraphale and Crowley’s first attempts at being godparents.–or–Before Adam, there were Cain and Abel.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	Tomayto, Tomahto

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my take on Freestyle Religion 101 :D (Bible students and farmers may want to run in the opposite direction.)  
> And remember, until Golgotha Crowley's name is Crawly.
> 
> I’d like to thank [roqueamadi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roqueamadi/pseuds/roqueamadi) for being the greatest beta ever :)
> 
> PS: If you want to know what’s up with this fic’s theme (aka tomatoes), you can check out the end notes, just if you want to look out for the clues.  
> But if you want to go along with the unraveling of the story and let yourself be surprised, then ignore them till the end and just start reading :)
> 
> Added (2020-04-27):  
> 

Miles of sand lay before him as the gates of Eden closed behind Aziraphale for the last time. Weeks, months – God hadn’t been clear on the concept of time, apart from _7 days makes 1 week_ – had passed since he’d wished Adam and Eve good luck and watched them tumble into the same never-ending ochre hills he was now venturing into.

Eden was closed, forever. No refurbishments, no redecoration, just closed. There was no use looking after a place with no inhabitants, and the order he’d been given was clear. Aziraphale was to watch over the happenings on earth, and so far there were only two humans on said earth to even watch, to his knowledge.

Aziraphale sighed, a wry smile tugging at his lips as he started walking straight ahead towards the sun, whistling a jaunty tune.

At least getting in touch with Adam and Eve would be marginally less boring than watching Eden’s grass grow, though he would miss the juicy pears.

* * *

It had taken some time for Eden to be declared lost terrain, so Aziraphale wasn’t really surprised to find Eve holding two newborn boys, the planet’s first siblings, twins (even when years later, Cain would constantly remind everyone that he was older by a minute) and overall the first humans to have been brought into the world on earth-earth, not Eden-on-earth.

Aziraphale watched Eve cradle them to her bosom, and how their little red faces scrunched up and slackened again and again in content while asleep.

The loss of the divine garden for something like this seemed suddenly like a fair trade to him. As well in Eve and Adam’s eyes, apparently, because he couldn’t otherwise explain how they’d not only welcomed him with open arms into their midst but also their other guest.

“What can I say, the apple was that good.”

Crawly was an addition to the new world order Aziraphale hadn’t anticipated. He’d expected to have seen the demon for the last time on the wall, which was foolish, he realized, as Crawly kicked pebbles across the ground. Of course Hell would send someone to thwart and tempt the now growing population earthside, so why not the demon who‘d managed to get this poo-y pile of dung rolling with a few hissed words of seduction? (God hadn’t asked again about the flaming sword and nobody from headquarters had reprimanded Aziraphale or requested his presence, so he was feeling a bit less twisted up inside about giving it away. If the sword was important, they would be more persistent, wouldn’t they?)

The hut Adam had crafted from whatever he’d found that wasn’t sand was crooked and far from the comforts they’d known before, but it kept the worst at bay, the pair pledged, one eye on their guests, one on their babes. Aziraphale didn’t know how long humans were supposed to live, but it seemed too long to spend it in something so unsteady and exposed.

As he started a little miracle, a few stronger walls here and there, the ground around the house began to harden and press into even ground. The latter hadn’t been him.

A converted side glance told him all he needed to know. Crawly stared upwards into the burning midday sun, seemingly ignoring everything around him, but Aziraphale didn’t miss the little snap he did with his fingers half hidden behind his black linens and the acre of serviceable ground spreading out around them.

“Would you look at that, those buggers are sprouting on your property. Better rip them out before you’re overrun with weed,” he heard the demon drawl after he’d stopped pretending to be interested in blue skies and sunshine.

Annoyed by Crawly’s ploy, Aziraphale prepared to perform another miracle, when Adam stepped forward to the green leaves breaking out of the earth and tugged at them, ripping a few of them free with his legs stemmed against the ground.

“This is most empathically _not_ gracious behavior for new neighbors,” Aziraphale began reprimanding Crawly.

He ended up facing a lovely bunch of carrots in Adam’s hands. He stared at the dirtied things, Adam stared at them, Eve stared with a hint of contemplation, and Crawly said, “Whoops,” in the most deadpan tone the world had heard to that day.

Stealing from the now closed Eden, or laying an underground landline to it, might have counted as an evil deed, Aziraphale reasoned with himself while he tried to get his widening eyes and twitchy mouth under control as he noticed the unmistakable ranks of a tomato vine crawl up in the evening’s shade of Adam’s hut. It wouldn’t be proper to smile at a fiend from Hell like he’d hung the moon. (Which he even might have done once upon a time. Nobody had ever told Aziraphale who had fallen; he was not high enough in the ranks for that, he’d been reminded with ice-cold impatience upon asking.)

Adam, austere as ever, gripped the orange vegetables hard and toed the now loosened soil, his face drawn tight in thought and his gaze fixed on the one small mercy they’d received when searching for land to live on – a little stream not far from their home, next to a slab of stone smack in the middle of more hills of sand and brittle trees.

“Thank you,” came from Eve, who eyed the newly sound roof of their home and walls no lion could get through before she smiled at the carrots in her husband’s hand.

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale hedged, “a few miracles to make your start easier won’t hurt anyone,” and cocked his head at Crawly, who shrugged, nonchalant.

“I’m just here to level the field and tempt you to sloth and adultery, so don’t get any ideas.” He still smirked at Aziraphale like he wanted to let him in on a joke, ignoring the potato saplings and the wheat sprouting in the distance. He succeeded insofar as the angel stuttered a choked hiccup of a laugh. So many choices in life partners for those humans at this point in time, indeed.

He hid his mouth behind a hand, swallowed a few times, and affected his smiting voice as best as he could. “You might try, foul demon, but I’ll thwart your every move.” Aziraphale truly quite felt as if they’d just created a running joke for the ages, one nobody else would be privy to.

Eve studied them over the safely cushioned heads of her children. Her prying eyes were not so different from Adam’s thinker face. They were of the same rib, after all.

“Would you be amendable to be an influence in my sons’ lives, to be their–“ She stopped, to think it over, then resumed, “To be their godly parents.”

It was already too late when Aziraphale realized she’d asked in plural.

He’d already nodded himself into a cricked neck.

* * *

The consensus had been that an agent of Hell and one of Heaven couldn’t (shouldn’t, Aziraphale had insisted) do this together, but if it was the parents’ desire, they could take their children under their wings.

They divided them between them, one child to mold for each of them. Guardian Angels, Eve had then called them to the exaggerated spitting of Crawly. He still had consented to look over his charge. (To tempt, influence and nudge him in the direction of Hell was what the demon had proclaimed, a lot of useless blustering on a stage with barely any spectators.)

Aziraphale’s protests to let a literal demon form the mind of a human boy from infancy had been weak after the vegetable incident and even more half-hearted after this theatrical performance but nonetheless had been routed in genuine trepidation. He didn’t send a report to his superiors and to his knowledge neither did Crawly. _Let this play out first, see how it goes, that paltry amount of years can’t hurt anyone._

As the aforementioned years crept along, Adam and Eve’s house became bigger and sturdier, as did the boys. The acres of fertile land became fields of blooming life and the animals which it attracted found a home there. The ones who didn’t want to eat the humans for lunch, at any rate.

And all the while Aziraphale watched over his godchild and Crawly over his own with minimal contact between them. At first.

Abel and Cain were well-behaved enough to allow for a decent amount of distance between their minders. The boys didn’t make a fuss if they had to separate for their lessons, but they still loved each other as brothers are wont to do, truly content when together.

In a twist of irony, the same could be said for their unearthly guardians, who were fine with exchanging a few words from time to time, pleasantries and banter alike. Aziraphale, after all, had manners, and Crawly had…whatever it was Crawly had. Though Aziraphale was starting to suspect it was cunning with a side serving of repressed kindheartedness, lowercase on the repressed.

For all they had the same mother and father, the first brothers of humankind were each their own person by the time they reached adulthood, with their parents long moved to other regions to give them privacy, and Aziraphale wasn’t sure if brotherhood was supposed to work like that or if it had been Crawly and his interference in their lives that led to them being so different.

Aziraphale taught about respect for all creatures, forgiveness and God’s incomparable love. Crawly taught, on the rare occasions Aziraphale was listening in, about power, using all existing in your repertoire to reach your goals and how to make farting noises with one’s armpit.

Aziraphale kept on studying the demon outside of these forced meetings. He wouldn’t call it spying per se, but he was also certain that he wasn’t supposed to watch Crawly scream at a field of rye to grow better and find it endearing.

* * *

Where the women popped out from, Aziraphale didn’t know, and quite frankly, he was a bit afraid to ask. But the boys were so happy, so overjoyed to get wives of their own, Aziraphale just sighed, presented his mouth pressed into an unhappy line to Crawly, who shrugged, “It wasn’t me, angel,” and let them get on with their mating rituals.

With Cain and Abel occupied with reproducing and carving out their own professions – tending the fields for Cain, keeping the livestock up for Abel – there was naught to do for their godparents and they had more free time on their hands than one needed or wanted in a world with a population of six, soon to be eight. Yet Aziraphale didn’t complain, it was a wink in time, wasn’t it, and he’d preached everything he could think of to form a young mind into a steadfast man.

Sitting on a protruding rock overseeing the growing settlement, Aziraphale felt a presence beside him. He wasn’t in the mood to harp on about the horrors of fraternizing with evildoers. It was too hot and the wind had a field day by constantly blowing sand into his face.

“Crawly.”

“Angel.”

The demon took a seat next to Aziraphale, stretching his limbs and neck in writhing motions that belied his other gestalt, his vertebrae softly popping. “Body’s still feeling unnatural.”

“You could always switch back into snakedom,” Aziraphale offered.

Crawly waved him off, putting his weight onto his elbows and just sprawling out like the lazy reptile he was.

“Not complaining, it has its advantages.” He wiggled in place, accidentally hip-checking Aziraphale. There was neither fierce burning nor the cold grip of wrongness where they touched, as Aziraphale had imagined, just the feeling of warm flesh beneath cloth. Though, Crawly’s slit pupils keenly focused on him made him revisit how accidental it might have really been.

Instead of shying away, Aziraphale kept still, his hip pressed up against the demon’s. He wouldn’t give that wily old serpent an inch. He needed to learn to stop invading people’s personal bubbles with his splayed legs and lounging about. A book on etiquette wouldn’t be amiss. Aziraphale had plans to write one as soon as letterpress printing became a thing.

Silence settled between them. Crawly sometimes jiggled his leg akin to a nervous tick, jolting Aziraphale’s thigh with him into the motion, and Aziraphale strenuously ignored the scent of apples drifting off his seatmate.

As Abel left one of the houses to make his habitual round to his cows and sheep, feeding them plump and round with extra rations – the greedy things – Aziraphale softly cleared his throat.

“Did you hear about the new instructions? One of your agents might have mentioned it to you.”

Crawly deliberately widened his eyes, as big and bright as he could make them without jamming the muscles in it, and let them sweep over the land before them. The very sparsely peopled land.

Fidgeting, Aziraphale cocked his head, granting him the point. “Yes, well, there are new rules.”

He pointed at a fleck of green, a hill offside their living square. “There’s now to be a day each month for the boys to pay oblations to Her. Right over there. And you,” he wiggled his fingertips in Crawly’s face, “are forbidden to enter while the sacrifice takes place.” He retracted his hand. “And me too.”

“No interference with the nibbles for Her Who Shall Not Be Named, got it. However will I cope?”

“The memo was quite clear. It’s something just for the boys alone. Neither side is to sabotage the other in this,” Aziraphale stressed again.

Crawly rotated his neck, giving him a _look_. “Because demons are so well known for doing what mommy asks of them.”

“Hush.” Without thinking, Aziraphale swatted the demon on the shoulder. “There are supposed to be wards. I don’t know what kind, but don’t trudge onto triple blessed ground.”

The slow and sinuously stretching grin on Crawly’s lips halted his explanation for a second before he continued, flustered.

“I don’t want you to ruin Her feast, that’s all. Stop looking so– so smug.”

The forked end of Crawly’s tongue peeked out between his teeth. “Whatever you sssssay, angel.”

Had he known this would be the start of the end for their life here, Aziraphale might have taken his erstwhile companion up on the following offer to share ripe tomatoes fresh from the field with him, but henceforth he did not and just declined respectfully.

* * *

Legend says that God preferred Abel’s offerings, his fattened livestock, over Cain’s grain, hard-won in a world of sand. ‘Tis a version of the events which unwittingly left out most of the facts, but felt not only true to historians and clergy to come but also to Cain.

At the first offering day, their families and godfathers stayed a safe distance away while Cain and Abel deposited their boons on the hill. Nothing happened at morning, nothing happened during the day time, nothing happened when it grew darker. Not until, exhausted from doing nothing, all humans went to sleep and angel and demon bid them goodnight.

The next morning, animals and grain were gone.

It became clear that God wasn’t a fan of an audience when she picked up her sweets, no matter how far away they stayed. As long as someone even looked, she wouldn’t touch her pre-ordered gifts of deference.

The second batch went without a hitch, Abel and Cain’s children were born, and so forth were the offerings of the next year successes.

But then a den of lions ripped up half of Abel’s herd and splattered their guts over a whole field of corn, razed it in their hunt for more prey amidst the wheat, and measures had to be taken to guarantee the humans could keep sustaining themselves and still provide presents for God. They rationed the animal feed and concentrated only on the most required plants.

When the next offerings were herded and laid down at the place of sacrifice, and brothers and unearthly creatures turned from it to not be blinded by God’s light (and ruin Her appetite), it started to go downhill in a way no one had foreseen.

The cattle had grown hungry, as they had not been fed in the manner they were accustomed to. No sooner had everyone turned their backs, did they upset the crates of grain Cain had hand-selected and began to eat whatever they could fit into their maws. So when God took them, she also took Cain’s grain in their bellies with them, glad for two worthy offerings. Yet, at coming back, the brothers only found the livestock gone and half the corn scattered in a hazard on the ground, left as if sampled and decided unfit.

The decline was tangible from there on even when no one spoke of it to soothe hurt egos, not amplify others’, and keep the peace they’d always known.

Cain began to work day and night, raking his fields, planting what he could, juggling bucket after bucket, watering the fields until his hands blistered, trying to balance out what the lions’ attack had destroyed. But it would take time, and come oblation day, a quarter of his givings was once again left behind.

Abel became boastful. They were little digs, in the grand scheme of things nothing substantial or particularly hurtful, that cracked the surface of his brother’s wounded ego. Let loose in the presence of Cain, they became weapons sharper than the sword Adam had taken with him to places Aziraphale now wished to visit so not to have to run interference at every corner.

The months came and went and turned into years, and while Cain worked himself into a stupor and Abel let things continue, sure in the knowledge God liked his presents best as they were, trusting in her love for him, the brothers drifted from each other. They were no longer two men independent and yet connected by love, they were oxen on each side of a field, a fence between them too high to climb and too thick to breach.

The tension was unbearable, and no matter what Aziraphale or Crawly whispered to their charges, it kept growing.

“She’s not taking it well.” Crawly nodded at the darkening sky, a storm brewing as they’d not seen for years.

Aziraphale shot him a bitter glare. “You should be happy. There’s now envy, pride and strife in the heart of humanity. Isn’t that what you demons exist for?” he said, the haughtiness he tried for ruined by the wringing of his hands as he fingered his golden pinky ring in aggravation.

Crawly’s sigh reached his ears a second before lightning struck the fence on the hill of sacrifice and Aziraphale instinctively pushed his wings out, shielding first Crawly and then himself from the raindrops cutting through the air, harder than the sand ever had been.

From the distance thunder boomed and flashes of light broke through the night sky.

Screaming pulled their attention to the little village Abel, Cain and their families had built over decades. One of the huts’ doors was thrown open, Abel storming out.

“I don’t have to listen to this!” he screeched, whipping his head around to scream more justifications over his shoulder. “These imagined slights of yours are not my fault! I can’t help that the Lord prefers–“

“Stop lying!” Cain bellowed whilst storming after his brother. The rain started slicking his hair into his eyes as he followed Abel and the argument outside. “You always thought yourself so much better and now you–“ The rest of his accusations were cut off by the ever louder coming crashes of thunder.

Aziraphale couldn’t understand a word, the drowning cacophony above them made it impossible and standing up to come closer didn’t help either. By doing so, he just let the rain stream over Crawly and himself more freely.

Cain and Abel’s gestures became erratic, their hands thrown out in anger, their movements choppy.

Then – and to this day Aziraphale would forever wonder what Abel had said – the brothers started running. Abel threw himself over the wet ground as if wild animals were on his heels, and not far from the truth, Cain raced after him, his fists balled and his mouth constantly moving.

They were sprinting towards the hill, no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Abel might have thought the lightning bolts hitting the earth around the hill would dissuade Cain from going after him, but it was the opposite. To see Abel go to the hill, where Cain had laid his heart onto the ground for years and had it rebuffed time and time again, fueled his rage. The distance between them shrank as they neared the top.

Hurrying after them wouldn’t get him there in time, Aziraphale realized, his feet still trying to do their best. Mud and pelting rain hit his robes, his calves dirtied from it, he ran on unsteady feet toward the hill, while the boys just seemed to become tiny dots in the distance.

A hand grabbed his wrist and Crawly yanked him through a hole in space, using all the energy he’d collected over the years – Aziraphale could feel it tingle through his bones – and spit them out on the hill, mere meters from the brothers. Abel lay on the ground, his mouth bloody, his eyes glazed but still conscious, and Cain, Cain was–

At the end of the day, an angel and a demon sat themselves on their slab of stone, side by side, overlooking a now barren field, and didn’t say a word through the night as they shared the last tomato the land had brought forth, mud splattered and rain-bitten as it was.

6000 years later, there was not a soul who could say with certainty which side had been responsible for Cain’s deed, and that might have been the beauty and tragedy of it in equal parts.

But Aziraphale would forever remember beseeching his ward, “Let off from these perceived slights, my son. He’s your brother, he’ll forever stand beside you.”

And Cain had still turned from him and picked up the stone.

* * *

Aziraphale didn’t see Crawly in the following years. He’d tucked himself away to look over the humans from afar, and prayed (not _prayed_ , since it would have been counterproductive) that upstairs wouldn’t start to wonder about the missing situation report. As far as they knew, Aziraphale had nothing to do with the first murder of humankind and he did his best to forget about it, to keep himself from doubting – doubting himself, his teachings, doubting humanity.

Sleep was a favorite pastime of the people these days, but Aziraphale was not courageous enough to try it, afraid what he would see in his dreams. Crawly’s absence could either mean he shared the humans’ hobby, did as Aziraphale in keeping to himself, or…or Hell had found out Crawly had reared the dead brother, the _innocent_ one (the prideful, the mean-spirited one, Aziraphale’s mind kept trying to insert), and Crawly had to pay for it. Or he got a recommendation, depending on whichever way he spun the tale.

So when he felt a tap on his shoulder while watching Noah load his boat with animals of all kinds, turned the wrong side, to be confronted with Crawly’s cheekily grinning face and a chirped, “Hello, Aziraphale!” he couldn’t even be offended by the following dig at him for losing the sword (AGAIN. He wasn’t sure where Adam had whisked the sword away to.)

Having to tell him that the Lord was planning on drowning everyone with an epic storm, children included, didn’t sit well with him either, but Crawly’s reaction demonstrated why Aziraphale had, in more moments than he admitted even to himself, missed him.

He vividly recalled the last storm of God’s making and the gruesome death in which it had ended. This time around, the murdering was on an even grander scale but heavenly sanctioned, and the outcome would be horrendous. A massacre was never good, but in contrast to Crawly’s shock about Her killing even the kids, Aziraphale thought, only to himself, that those children were descendants of Cain and therefore had the potential to end like him. So wouldn’t it make a certain sense to wipe the slate and start anew?

“Well, that’s more the kind of thing you’d expect my lot to do.”

Aziraphale squeezed his lips together and banned his improper thoughts, silently screaming _yes, it is_ – it was the ineffable plan and he was an angel, good, he had to be – and watched Crawly fawn over the last unicorn before he took shelter on the ark.

* * *

Their next meeting in Golgotha, 33 AD and the winds were still turning, was a somber affair. While Aziraphale couldn’t shake the feeling that Crowley’s name change wasn’t on a whim like he wanted to pretend and more due to the catastrophes that had happened while he’d basically been called a synonym for bottom dwellers, all Aziraphale was able to concentrate on was the final nail in Jesus’ hand.

_“Be kind to each other.”_

Aziraphale had seen where kindness could lead you and the quote rang with all the now hollow seeming phrases with which Aziraphale had bombarded Cain.

* * *

Rome was a ceaseless party, a fest of yummy food, great plays, and flowing wine. It was an effective way to banish sad thoughts and Aziraphale was in a state of equilibrium he hadn’t known since the days he’d chased Cain and Abel with the help of his demon adversary to take their weekly bath.

Thus he was in an even more exceptional good mood when he noticed Crawly. Pardon him, Crowley.

Aziraphale’s innocent question about his frenemy’s state of being, though, sent the demon into a tizzy Aziraphale couldn’t understand. Surely someone who had raised a child, saved hundreds of them during the grand flood (don’t think he didn’t notice the surprise survivors with a penchant for pet snakes) and who gave the messiah a tour around the world just for the sake of it would fall on the right side of the coin when it stopped rolling.

Guess not. The still-a-demon was antagonistic, not the way he was supposed to be, just intentionally unpleasant as if he wanted to dissuade Aziraphale from interacting for whatever reason. What temptations, botched or successful, had put him into this state, one might ask, though Aziraphale just tried to draw the joyous part of him out again. Crowley had unwittingly done it for him when he’d been in an endless string of years-long strop. Now that he was finally getting over it, and over himself, and looking forward to jumping right back into the miracle business, it was his turn to get Crowley to brighten up a little.

Oysters and a Freudian slip later, their bantering rapport was back on, to remain so for the next almost two thousand years, both pretending to be on different ends of the spectrum and not dots meeting in the middle of the scale.

Xxx

Aziraphale wasn’t startled _Crowley_ made the suggestion, he was just popeyed by the plan including him. Or, in reverse, he was surprised about the suggestion of raising the Antichrist together, not that it came from Crowley.

Six bottles of wine into it, Aziraphale would have been grateful for the idea, any idea that wasn’t just Crowley’s previous let’s-do-this-shit-and-stop-Armageddon non-plan, really, to stop the apocalypse if it meant not having to listen to The Sound of Music for all of eternity. Newly devoid of litres of Châtauneuf-du-Pape, the basics of Crowley’s masterplan made him feel queasy, and not just from the bad aftertaste of sobering himself up.

“But it’s the upbringing that’s important, the influences,” Crowley tried to assure him without much success.

That was precisely the problem, as far as Aziraphale was concerned. The child was literally born to be evil incarnate, not like Cain, never like Cain who’d been born innocent until Aziraphale must have tripped up along the way. He must have. Maybe it was part of the ineffable plan, but why did Aziraphale feel as though he’d condemned Abel to die by teaching his brother what he knew to be considered celestially perfect behavior.

“The evil influences, that’s all going to be me,” Crowley continued, and Aziraphale watched him, pensive. “It’d be too bad if someone made sure that I failed.”

“Don’t you think it would be the other way around?” The bitter words were out of Aziraphale’s mouth before he could grab them and stuff them back in.

Crowley stopped. Leaned forward. Studied Aziraphale with clear yellow eyes out in the open, delving into the angel’s mind without the help of a miracle.

“It won’t turn out like back then. Promise.” He said it placidly, like he had any chance of seeing into the future, but that had been a power only ever gifted to one single human and her prophecies had been missing for hundreds of years.

“You can’t–“

“I can.”

Softly, Aziraphale whispered, “How do you know that?”

“Because this time, angel,” his companion leaned forward, putting this hand over Aziraphale’s, “we’re doing it together and for the same child. No separate kids, no ravine of one-sided information to heap upon him. He will be normal, so fucking 50/50, you wouldn’t even notice him on the street.”

“If you put it that way…”

“We’d be godfathers.”

The word swept like a shiver over Aziraphale.

“Godfathers.” It could work, Aziraphale thought as he felt Crowley’s warm skin on his cramped hand. It really could.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” He broke into hysteric laughter. Manic optimism was still better than the alternative.

* * *

Nanny Ashtoreth flopped onto the couch in a quaint little bookshop in Soho and refused to get up again.

“I take it back. He can have his apocalypse as long as I don’t have to help him with calculus again,” Crowley-in-a-dress, and what a dress it was, hissed.

Aziraphale had taken his fake teeth out the moment they’d come here. Leaving each day at the same time gave the Dowlings and their staff the idea they had a torrid love affair of the forbidden kind, which therefore gave them much fodder for gossip, but if angel and demon didn’t have each other to talk to about Warlock, Aziraphale probably would have run the child over with a lawnmower by now, pained and shamed as it made him feel.

“It’s maths.”

“Exactly!” Crowley flung his arms around, more wet noodles than snakey grace. “I didn’t think it would age so well when I told Adam about numbers! I thought it would remain counting with fingers, confusing him a bit, driving people crazy to remember how many were called what. Not that it would come back to bite me in the ass, trying to solve what’s X.” He fell back into a flat line on the overstuffed cushions. “Maths,” he growled.

Aziraphale nudged the steaming cup of coffee against Crowley’s hand, animating him to take it. He’d started drinking unholy amounts of it since playing nanny for the Antichrist. Aziraphale couldn’t fault him. The boy was…

“He’s not turning out as normal as we’d hoped.”

Crowley sipped on the Arabica brew, paused, then threw it back like a shot of tequila, setting his pinned hat askew in the process. “He’s not evil, he’s just annoying.”

“Are you quite positive about that?” Aziraphale asked, thinking back on Warlock posting those nasty, nasty memes about Brother Francis’ mutton chops online. (Crowley had been unrepentantly gleeful when he’d shown Aziraphale how to log into Tumblr.)

“Yeah, I am. He’s on the brink of turning into a teenager with daddy’s bank account and influence behind him. He’s bound to become a little shit.” The boy was ten.

Smiling, Aziraphale plucked the rest of the beard from his face, only wincing when it came to the bit touching his temples. Traces of spirit gum stayed stubbornly behind. “How understanding you are, my dear. As I’ve always said, you’re really quite nice.”

The coffee was momentary forgotten as Crowley jumped up, sloshing it over the rim and getting Aziraphale to do a slap-n-dash miracle to save his carpet.

“I’m not _nice_. I’m trying to teach the Antichrist how to be evil, for Satan’s sake!”

Aziraphale blinked, innocently fluttering his eyelashes at the hypocrisy. “You’re still reading him bedtime stories.”

“About disembowelment and the flames of Hell turning human skin into burnt rubber!”

Huffing a quiet laugh, Aziraphale continued, “You’re reading to him when he can’t sleep. You force the cook to make his favorite sweets when he’s sad.”

“I want him to get cavities! It will make him unbearable.”

“You help him with maths though you hate it even more than he does.”

Crowley admitted defeat by slumping onto the couch arm and nipping at his almost empty cup. He started mumbling against the rim of it. “Still wouldn’t be doing so well without’cha. Can you image how he would have turned out without your influence?”

Seeing Warlock before his inner eye, bringing him a piece of cobbler this morning to say sorry for making him a viral sensation, Aziraphale had to confess that he couldn’t.

One year left to see if it was enough.

“How’s your gardening going, by the way? Still desperate for advice? I saw you plant a new tomato variety yesterday,” Crowley asked, unwittingly snapping Aziraphale out of his musings. “Or do I have to have a chat with it?”

“Hm?” Aziraphale relaxed. “Oh, no, my dear. It’s going quite well. It’s not a local plant, but I’m sure those nice Jericho tomatoes will still flourish in time and with the right touch.”

* * *

“But I’m just a kid.”

Aziraphale felt sand drift through his wings as if no time had passed since the beginning of humanity.

They were here with Adam, a kid not Warlock, a kid neither Abel nor Cain. But he was all of them and they were all like him, Aziraphale realized in a moment of clarity he’d searched for since the day on the bloodied hill of deference.

“But that’s not a bad thing to be, Adam. You know, I was scared you’d be Hell incarnate.” Like he’d feared Crowley would be, at the start.

“I hoped you’d be Heaven incarnate.” Like he’d believed for far too long his angelic brothers were.

He’d learned on both accounts how blind he’d been.

“But you’re not either of those things. You’re much better.” Aziraphale saw Crowley over Adam’s shoulder, hanging on his words, so obviously, stupidly looking relieved to hear what he’d tried to get Aziraphale to see for millennia, to accept.

Outer influences, personality, free will – they _all_ made up the person.

And Aziraphale saw the light.

“You’re human incarnate.”

Giving the signal with his eyes to Crowley, his partner took over.

“Adam, reality will listen to you right now. You can change things.”

Carefully, seeing the ghosts of all his children before him, Aziraphale took Adam’s hand into his, raised his sword and flexed his wings, spanning them to flare protectively behind the Antichrist.

“And whatever happens, for good or for evil, we’re beside you.”

What was it the humans liked to say?

Ah, yes.

_Third time’s the charm._

**Author's Note:**

> “What’s up with the tomatoes?” some of you may ask.  
> Good question, so here’s the answer for anyone who’s interested! :D
> 
> It’s rumored that the real Apple of Eden was a tomato. Pomegranates, figs and even potatoes are other prominent Apple of Eden alternatives that found their way into literature and art.
> 
> In English, German, French and lots of other languages, tomatoes are also known as “paradise apples” and “love apples”, or variations of that.  
> And the Jericho tomato (Solanum incanum) is nicknamed “snake apple” and “Sodom apple” (and a million other things).
> 
> Tomayto, Tomahto = “suggest that something is a distinction without a difference”, “dismiss a correction to one's adherence to an alternative standard”, unimportant difference (to quote Wiktionary).  
> Or in my own words: I call it this, you call it that. It’s still the same thing.
> 
> *splays hands in front of the audience* Please discuss.  
> Talking about other things than tomatoes is also highly encouraged, like, how you liked the story ;)


End file.
